James P. Wilson

American Incest Patterns

FAM-159

INTRODUCTION

Intrafamilia sex, or incest, is on the rise according to Dr. Ralph Dormann a sociopsychoanalyst who not only studies the behavior of individuals but of entire social groups in relationship to their particular environment. At one time, sexual incest was practiced almost exclusively in the upper middle-class and extremely wealthy segments of American society. In isolated pockets such as the Kentucky hill country, families also lived together and slept together as well. Until the turn of this decade, these two extreme segments were representative of the social type, who openly turned inward for sex. Mothers slept with sons, fathers with their daughters and there were even cases where grandmothers, women in their sixties had sexual relations with their grandsons who were still in their teens. As previously stated, these cases were to be found almost exclusively in either the backward hill country of the American South-east, or wealthy families where inbreeding had become a way of life for many generations past. In the mid-1970s, this pattern for incestuous conduct has changed drastically.

In the majority of incestuous case histories that are documented today, the socioeconomic background appears to have very little effect on the participating couples. Incest may occur in the middle class, or the poorer classes as easily and as often as it does in wealthier families.

The motivations for incestuous conduct also appear to be changing in the past, wealthier families who consistently practiced incest wanted to keep their wealth in the family.

They distrusted outsiders, or new blood. Today, they fear for their lives. They are afraid of being exploited, blackmailed or even murdered for lawlessness has increased to a point where the rich trust no one but members of their immediate families. They draw together for social interests, and those social interests include sex. The sex rites of the rich today are not only exercises in pleasure but experiments to discover the most appropriate mate within the family.

The middle class are no less distrustful of strangers than the rich in the 1970s, the advent of the family picnic among the middle class has become an annual and extremely important event. The picnic, usually held on the isolated bank of a river, brings all of the family together, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, cousins, nieces and nephews. Nude bathing has become a vital rite in such an affair. Eventually, the nude bathers pair off and disappear for sex. A mother may seduce her son, a father his daughter, an aunt her nephew and so on.

The widowed women in the family are given the choice of the youngest available boys.

In the poorer segment of society, incest has become more prevalent than ever. When a man dies and leaves a wife who can still bear children, she selects the strongest son, to impregnate her.

The motive? Fear. For the past five years, Dr. Ralph Dormann, a director of the Institute of Human Faetois in Santa Barbara, California has been analyzing many hundreds of incestuous case histories from all of the socioeconomic levels. His very definite conclusion is that fear of strangers outside of the family structure is causing more couples to turn to intrafamilia sex. He compares the situation to feudal times when villagers, all related to each other, erected high walls around the village to keep out intruders who threatened their safety. Today, families are erecting psychological walls, and turning inward to keep out strangers.